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View Full Version : Intelligent Item - caster/crafter requirements? [Pathfinder]



reefwood
2010-06-09, 07:45 PM
Are there any clear rules on the requirements needed for someone to create an intelligent item? I can't see to find them anywhere in the Intelligent Items section of the Magic Items chapter. Some things that I am wondering are...

1) What is the caster level requirement...for ability scores? Senses and Communication? Item Powers?

2) Does the caster need to have mental ability scores equal to or higher than the intelligent item being created?

3) Can an intelligent item be improved upon? Such as, receive new abilities or higher ability scores? The "Designing an Intelligent Item" section mentions that improvements can be made during creation, so that seems to imply that they cannot be made later.

reefwood
2010-06-09, 10:57 PM
After doing some digging, it seems like there isn't much in the way of intelligent item creation rules, so house rules may be the way to go.

The campaign I'm running gives access to magic items based on caster level, so that may simplify the house rules needed. At a certain level, PCs have access to CL 5, and at the next level, they have access to CL 6, and so on.

So what I need to figure out is the level of the caster needed to obtain various intelligent item abilities. Some things are easy to figure out. An item that can detect magic at will only requires a CL 1 for that part of it, but obviously, the CL will be higher based on the item creation feat. But yeah, casting spells is the easy CL to determine. Skill ranks would probably line up with the amount of skill ranks desired. 5 skill ranks requires CL 5, and 10 skill ranks requires CL 10...seems to make sense that the caster should at least be able to have as many skill ranks as the amount being put into the intelligent item.

What I'm not sure about are the mental ability scores. A couple ideas...

1) The intelligent item starts off with Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10. I noticed that a magic item to increase 1 mental ability scores requires CL 8, 2 score requires CL 12, and 3 score requires CL 16. So this option would require CL 8 to increase any 1 score more than 10, CL 12 to increase any 2 score more than 10, and CL 16 to increase all 3 scores.

2) The intelligent item cannot have any mental ability scores higher than the highest ability score of its creator. So how do you determine the highest mental ability score of the creator? I thought about working backwards in a sense. A caster needs mental ability score of 14 to cast 4th-level spells, and 4th-level spells are granted no earlier than 7th level, so that would be CL 7 if you want the intelligent item to have any or all its mental ability scores up to 14.

What do you think of these ideas? Have other ways to determine CL for these abilities? How about the other abilities?

Irreverent Fool
2010-06-10, 12:38 AM
I was initially going to post something earlier today, but since I lack expertise in Pathfinder, I thought I might leave it to others. I couldn't find anything in the Pathfinder SRD (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/magic-items/intelligent-items---final) about intentionally making them, so it seems that the notes about increasing their stats after creation may be holdovers from something that was removed.

The rules do mention that less than 1% of magic items are intelligent, so it may be possible that a character is simply not meant to be able to create such things.

It really depends on how the DM wants intelligent items to be in the game. Intelligence might be limited to dangerous artifacts or strange circumstances that can't be duplicated, or they may require a caster to invest a part (or all) of his soul into an item. As such, homebrewed rules will generally depend on the game, and I think trying to generate general rules will probably be difficult outside of the game for which the rules will be used.

Either way, you should probably hit the homebrew forum with this. I look forward to an update, though.

Rokurai
2010-06-10, 04:59 AM
This is just me, but I don't think any low level caster can create an intelligent item, as intelligent items are rare, unique pieces that have long and usually in-depth history, such as trapping the souls of their heroic epic level owners after they die, or being in the presence of an evil deity for so long that they develop malicious personalities of their own. This usually means that nothing less than an epic caster, epic craftsman, and the appropriate epic crafting feat is required in order to create an intelligent item without destiny or gods intervening directly.

If you seek a game mechanic standpoint, I offer you Awaken Construct, a Level 9 Clr/Sor/Wiz Spell that has an expensive XP component, and a material component that essentially tells you you need to kill someone and take their life force to create another sentient being, quoting "the brain of a humanoid that has been dead no more than 8 hours." If you combine this with the 8 hour casting time of the spell, it essentially requires you to kill and extract a brain then begin the spell casting immediately, or you need to have someone kill the individual to be 'transplanted' during your channeling of the spell.

All moral issues aside, Awaken Construct is a 9th level spell by itself, without adding any special abilities to the construct, in your case a weapon or armor with sentience. All these things lead me to the conclusion that anything you do in terms of the items at-will and per day special powers, would add to the spell casting difficulty significantly enough to have an epic level casting requirement.

One way or another, this is just my take on this, and it is ultimately up to you how to run your campaign's item creation.

ShadowFighter15
2010-06-10, 07:30 AM
Found something about creating intelligent items; look under the heading "Designing an Intelligent Item", specifically the first sentence of the second paragraph:

An intelligent magic item has a base price increase of 500 gp.

No mention of other pre-reqs or direct answers to your questions, but those should be easy enough for a DM to work out (Craft Magical Arms & Armour is probably a given). I'd offer my own suggestions, but they might way off what could be usable.

Ranos
2010-06-10, 09:47 AM
Two ways I know of to make intelligent weapons are the warforged artificer substitution levels and weapons of legacy. Pretty sure I had a third which gave them the actual powers of intelligent weapons, but I forgot. Those methods are not specifically pathfinder, but it's all backward-compatible anyway, right ?

reefwood
2010-06-10, 11:27 AM
Thanks for all the feedback!

I think it makes sense that intelligent items are rare and also do lean toward the opinion that PCs shouldn't be making them. Especially in a more typical campaign. Though, a (5th-level? bard pixie) PC in one of my prior campaigns did start out with an intelligent item. It had a rad background, added some extra flavor, and wasn't powerful enough to unbalance things.

My current campaign is in a war setting with the PCs as soldiers who partake in a mix of big battle scenes and special missions. Instead of buying items with gold, and in addition to spoils recovered on the battlefield, the PCs gain access to more valuable "weapon/item lockers" as they advance and based on their level of success. There is also sometimes a point system to gauge the success of a battle or mission, which I guess in a way replaces XP - that we don't bother tracking (though, I have started to use it more recently to gauge challenges). Sometimes the PCs gain a level based on the mission points they acquire, or sometimes they simply gain a level when the mission is complete. It is kind of a ever-evolving/tweaking system.

Anyway, I am fine with letting each PC obtain one intelligent item in this campaign, and I wouldn't have even bothered looking into it myself, but a player asked about getting one. I'm curious about the item creation part because that will help me gauge when the PCs will have access to this kind of item, even though they won't be the ones making them.

If there are any more rules or insights that anyone has to share, I would still like to see them. But as someone else mentioned, any house rules ideas or questions that pop into my mind will be posted in the homebrew thread.

Thanks again everyone!

Rokurai
2010-06-10, 05:09 PM
You'd have to take it item by item, since different intelligent items would have different powers. The best way I can think of to determine item level in terms of when the PCs should be getting it is to take the most expensive ability an item has (I think the TaB supplement had a table to break down all item properties to a price component) multiply its price by 100%, take the second most expensive and multiply it by 50% price, take the third and multiply it by 25% price, and take all less expensive powers and multiply their price by 10% and add the whole lot together. And add that to the weapon's regular cost for its +X status and component materials(like adamantine).

Again, I don't know if your item would even have more than four powers considering that you said you wanted the characters to get it relatively early on, but if you want to make the item upgradable, then it would be an easy, hassle-free house rule that in order to get the item's next stage of awakening(for lack of a better term) the player has to sacrifice magic items of equal or greater value to the increase in price that would occur from adding a new power. Keep in mind that depending on the power, you might have to recalculate which power is the most expensive and so on each time you upgrade it. I've used this in an oriental campaign with ancestral daisho, and by level 22, the samurai had awakened intelligence in his katana. The ancestral daisho upgrades also state that an item's owner must meditate to commune with his ancestors for 1 day per 1000g of the items price, so if you want to include the crafting time requirement it would be something like that.

Hope this helps.